


The Bees of Britain

by aderyn



Series: Deep Map [20]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bees & Beekeeping, Dreams, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Gardens, Legacies, Love, Memory, Retirement, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sherlock's bee-speak, bee-speak not bespoke, larvae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:57:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Apis mellifera is particularly attracted to pink flowers,” Sherlock says, “though they don’t see red.”<br/>“Pink,” John says.<br/>“Sentiment,” Sherlock says, “naturally.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bees of Britain

**Author's Note:**

> [Beautiful art by khorazir!](http://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/57353461006/theres-a-drowned-mayfly-in-a-puddle-by-mrs)

_“I could not run without having to run forever._  
 _The white hive is snug as a virgin,_  
 _Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.”—S. Plath, “The Bee Meeting”_

He had a dream the other night. He’s married to a woman, and she’s about to give birth, and it’s a girl, beautiful, a helpless unnamed little beauty with dark amber floss on her head and eyes like greenstones.

He doesn’t take her home. Instead, fairy with a stolen child, he carries her to Baker Street, where Sherlock fixes her with a gaze (changeling indeed) and says, well. We’ll need to make some adjustments around here.

Under the swaddling transparent wings.

*******

“London’s had hives for some time,” Sherlock’s told him.

The countryside thousands more.

Ah, there he is (ten years from now) standing by the windows in his lab coat, roundish gold wire-rims, his hair a bit shaggier, a bit ashier, thinking on his life: a woman saying I love you John; Sherlock never saying that, not really, not needing to because really, his position on John Watson is obvious.

*******

“There are two-hundred ninety species of bee in Britain,” Sherlock says, “at least.”

Threads rosined fingers through his hair, still dark, iridescent, a fine thread of hematite.

The last case they had he nearly died.

A boy returned home and then, headlines, duckings, runnings, the blog so hard to title, gasps at their luck, wakings in the dark, the secret pulling of hair, the soft affirmation of breath, breaths.

*******

Pneumonia, a broken rib, two. A sooty damp December. A frigid spring. No cases that aren’t dangerous. No limp but still, still.

The British black honeybee discovered in a church in Northumberland.

Sherlock bites a thumb at the news.

Opens a website full of real estate. Pastureland. Downs. Flowery fallow fields. Margins of thistle and buttercup. Gardens of bee balm and vetch.

“John,” he says.

Imagine the cottage as crime scene.

Dead sparrow, dragonfly, weasel and vole.

Dead parson in the parsonage.

Pagans in the fields all blood-wet with sacrifice.

_Giggle there all you want._

_Wouldn’t you like to see some more._

*******

There’s a drowned mayfly in a puddle by Mrs. Hudson’s bins.

She left awhile ago, is how they think of it, but isn’t far off.

In the churchyard where Sherlock goes, once a week, or they both do.

Leave a bouquet and a biscuit for the birds.

Assure her it didn’t fall, her country; they won’t let it.

*******

At Crossness sewage works, Thamesmead, a shrill carder bumblebee, not seen in London for a decade, spotted again, bright clue among the thistle.

*******

“ _Apis mellifera_ is particularly attracted to pink flowers,” Sherlock says, “though they don’t see red.”

The cottage is _Pratorum_ ; in meadows, yes, but really for the bumblebee with the pinkish abdomen, the one that …

“Pink,” John says.

“Sentiment,” Sherlock says, “naturally.”

Who might not name a cottage for their first-born.

Case, that is.

He paints the sign for the drive in his own hand.

John hangs it.

*******

The wind, southerly, bangs the panes, lifts Sherlock’s notes and John’s shirts, stills on their damp hair.

The soil, chalk, not unfamiliar, the mineral air sticking the old doors, the sounds of wings, of swallow skylark swift sparrow, a whistle and hum like distant traffic, the winterbournes rushing, recalling, a faint first love, the subterranean streams of the city. Stiles and bridges and gates to be closed behind, the formal dot-and-dash of the country.

The quiet’s an itch sometimes, a hum, not unfamiliar. Hill forts and earthworks and time.

A trickle that says _life_ , that says _what you miss you’ll keep_.

A curlew.  An Adonis blue in the _acquilegia_. 

Sherlock sets down a mug, acrid steam, next to John’s gun hand, looks out at the green, a wink of field and wall, one genius slipped into another.

You’ll keep.

*******

Sherlock moves round the hives as he used to bow, as he still does sometimes, saying things with his fingers, thick as a thief, famous as a ghost.

You speak bee, John thinks, this whisperage he didn’t know.

Pollen grains under the microscope. Saccoid, scabrate, sclerine, Sherlock mutters, fingers alight with dust.

There’s a fall of petals on one shoulder.

They look like stars.

*******

Gold light glancing off Molly’s wedding band. She was out, still sweet-faced, amber-haired still, exclaimed over the virgin’s bower in the garden, the dangerous hum of the painted Langstroths.  John’s cleaned the gun in the morning, listened to Sherlock laughing at stories of the dead, those not yet retired.  Molly’s grown daughter’s a copper, like her dad.

*******

In Sherlock’s beautiful freehand, in gold and peat Indian ink, a sketch, the queen alone, the hive a dim metropolis behind, over, around, through.

Next to John’s mystery on the table, a picture and its text.

*******

“Eat,” John says. The omelette’s from the garden, the sandwich on a half-moon of village bread. 

“ _Osmia avocetta_ makes sandwiches of flowers and mud,” Sherlock says, “for a nest.”

The larvae feed there, emerge from the flower.

Live.

*******

“You aren’t bored?” John says. “You’re OK?” There’s a chill in his spine under the sheep-spun robe, a gift from July; Sherlock’s fingers are cold round his coffee, his smile a coil of steam.  

There’s autumn, russet, in the vines, in the hayfields.

The sky’s a very beautiful grey.

*******

That old coat should be moth-eaten by now, even cradled, kept, sheeny and seasonal and wrong for the country, as it is.

It isn’t.

*******

There’s a flat candled honeycake in the pale winter light.

“Sherlock,” John says when the flames are blown, coughs a spell.

“Doesn’t need saying but …”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, “oh.”

“I love you and I’ll always stay with you.”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, “I…” He’s officially old today, Mycroft’s called to say. A false spring at the feast of the Epiphany. A memory of the day he turned six, the new knife in his pocket, the day he solved his first murder, a knifing, the day, oh, _apis mellifera mellifera_ , the day John’s face cut to the quick, told him he’d never be the same.

“The homing of the European honeybee,” Sherlock says, “is …”

Something about landmarks and odour, a breath.

“Right here then,” Sherlock says, pulls John’s hands to his ribs, pulls John’s fingers to his hair.

The garden’s dormant and the hives are still.

*******

There are two-hundred seventy species of solitary bee in England.

Twenty-five bumblebees; two honeybees.

Some dying; some endangered.

There are six species of bee orchid in Europe.

They used to see them at Kew, sometimes.

*******

The last time they were in London they walked their old paths, the city prick-eared to see them, tail-swishing and bright on the brickwork of Baker.

The flat’s empty, kept, a sweet vault, top-barred, of a twined past. Paced here wrote here bled here collapsed here. Shouted and left and grieved and came back. The wood gleaming with wax. The wall still knot-holed as a trunk. The furniture draped in gossamer, sendings of chemical and tea.  An aural spectre of Bach. An old pushpin tongued with evidence, crime-atoms twinkling under the sofa. Setae. Faint pheromones. The brasses shining when they lean in, catch themselves smiling.

*******

There are seven celestial bees, sort of, or flies, the old _Musca Borealis_ , _Australis,_ the bees northern and southern, Vespa, Apus, the _apis_ lurking in Taurus, and that night in the garden the vespertines, the night-scented stock, a sip, something sweet and bitter, all nectar and ground fog and time.

“John,” Sherlock says, “You remember the night …”

The one with the sure flight of a bullet.

The one with the venom and the ginger and the cracked smile and the shed memories of a war.

Us, lifted, larval, from our old selves.

Now the hand-crushed leaf and mouth, things growing and murdering out there on their own-- and this.

*******

There are bees in Thailand that drink tears.

Bees that’ll be the future brains of a nation.

Finding their way, atomic, to the lost pistils.

Trailing new life wherever they go.

*******

“Ah, John,” Sherlock says, at the tea full of honey, the scribblings and flasks on the cherry table, the laptop between them humming and humming, “what’ll we leave?”

When we go, he means.

“It matters to you,” Sherlock says, “and so to me.”

A little pain there, hard by the sternum, a little sting.

 All the murderers put away, the blood and death and death put away.

Unbearable sharpness, is what. Like a blade. Like a bow. Adventures. Dark honey and London.

_All this._

You shone a light, somehow, dark as you were, on our darkness. In the cells where we found ourselves, yeah, all those years ago.

We emerged to this.

*******

“John!” Sherlock calls from the garden, almost in the case-voice,”come see what’s grown.”

You could grow me, John thinks, an ultraviolet flower-- matinal, glorious, tattooed with tribal honeyguides--the only one in the world.

You already have.

*******

In the city, there’s forage. Hives on the roofs of St. Paul’s, the Museum of London, their old footsteps outlined in pollen and forewing.

In the hives, in the vines, the salmon _lonicera_ of their garden, their twined hands.

Just there, twined in sleep.

The gold honeybee and the black, and all of England kept in sweetness.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ Bee brains](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/bees-route-finding-problems)   
> [ British bumblebees](http://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/identification/)   
> [British black honeybee re-discovered in church](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171924/Extinct-British-breed-honeybee-alive-church-rafters-nearly-80-years.html)   
> [Bombus pratorum](http://www.commanster.eu/commanster/Insects/Bees/WBees/Bombus.pratorum.html)   
> [Langstroth hives](http://davesbees.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Our-Langstroth-Hives.jpg)   
> [ London Wildlife Trust, bees](http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/bees-and-wasps)   
> [ Bees on church roof,London](http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/city-bees-go-to-church-in-london-and-get-saved.html)   
> [Tear-drinking bees](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2138893/Shut-eyes-Species-bee-discovered-likes-drink-sweet-sweet-nectar-TEARS.html)   
> [Bee flower sandwiches](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100510-bees-flower-sandwich-nests-pictures/)   
> [ Shrill carder bumblebee discovered in East London](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/rare-bee-species-found-in-london-8297127.html)   
> [London Beekeepers Association](http://www.lbka.org.uk/in_the_news.html)   
> [Sussex Ornithological Society](http://www.sos.org.uk/)   
> [ flowers in ultraviolet](http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html)   
> [ Pollen grains](http://smithsonianscience.org/2009/07/research-collection-of-pollen-grains-given-to-smithsonian-tropical-research-institute/)   
> [ Lonicera tartarica](http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=439)   
> [Adonis blue butterfly, Sussex](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5720815/Adonis-Blue-butterfly-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  “He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. "Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London."—ACD, “His Last Bow”
> 
> Thank you so much for reading.


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